Pork and Lotus Root Soup

A simple, savory, nutritious soup that is comforting and warms your soul.

Stuff you'll need

• Pork ribs (spare ribs or baby back ribs are both fine)
  • Or, any kind of pork bones with some meat on it. The bones impart a lot of flavor, and the meat is for eating. If you just want the flavor, you could go for mostly bones without a lot of meat. I find that ribs have a good combination of both.
• Lotus root
• Salt
• MSG
• White pepper (black pepper is fine too)
• Ginger
• Cooking wine
• (Optional) Instant pot or pressure cooker

Preparation

Chop the pork ribs or pork bones into manageable chunks. Manageable as in: can it fit in your mouth, or can you suck on it to get the meat off the bone? You can choose to remove the scum from the pork, or not, depending on how much effort you want to put into this, and how much you care about how the scum affects the end result.

Put the pork, some salt, MSG, white pepper, ginger, and cooking wine into the instant pot with enough water to cover it. Cook it in the instant pot on the soup broth setting or the meat stew setting for about 15-20 minutes. The high pressure of the instant pot raises the boiling point of water, which means that the soup will cook at a much higher temperature. This, along with the high pressure, cooks the meat much faster, and tenderizes the meat much faster too. It's magical. What's the difference between the soup broth setting and the meat stew setting? I don't know, but I think I've tried both and the both work fine.

You could do this in a regular pot too, you'll just need to cook it a lot longer to tenderize the meat. My guess is you should simmer it on the order of 2-3 hours, but you can use your feelings to figure out the right amount of time.

Once the meat is done, add in the lotus, some more salt, msg, and white pepper if needed, and add some more water to cover the lotus. The lotus will also release some water, so there's usually more water after the soup is done cooking. Cook it again on the same instant pot setting for another 15-20 minutes, or on the stove top until the lotus is cooked through and soft. I don't know how long that takes, use your feelings to figure it out.

And that's it! You can remove the ginger afterward because ginger will release an acrid taste if it soaks or cooks too long.